Hearts in tax bill summit with HMRC to stave off end of the Jambos

THE Edinburgh club have only until Thursday to come up with £450,000 they owe in tax.

HEARTS were last night locked in talks with the taxman in a last-ditch bid to save the club from going to the wall.

The Gorgie club have entered into discussions with HMRC over the outstanding £450,000 tax bill that threatens to close them for good.

Customs are considering Hearts’ payment plan but for now Thursday’s close-of-play deadline for the unpaid tax bill to be settled in full remains intact.

A total of 135 jobs are at risk if Hearts go under ranging from playing staff, management, coaches, physios, admin and matchday staff at the club academy at Riccarton and Tynecastle. The news came out hours after a group of mystery Hearts supporters held tentative talks with the club about a prospective takeover from owner Vladimir Romanov.

Speaking at the weekend Jambos director Sergejus Fedetovas had originally claimed HMRC were unwilling to enter into talks about the debts.

He said: “I am still hopeful that we can go back to HMRC and have a dialogue and that they will reassess the situation.”

Some of the Hearts supporters actively involved in potentially launching a takeover bid are described as having “business interests”.

The group, for the time being at least, are keen to keep their identities a secret, owing to the?sensitive nature of talks.

It is not clear what response, if any, they have had from Romanov.

Last November, Romanov slapped an £50million price tag on Hearts even though the club’s last financial results revealed a debt of £24m.

Fedetovas said: “Mr Romanov will have a discussion with anyone willing to invest or buy the club.

“The only difficulty is that there are a lot of people pretending they want to buy this club and pretending they have the money.

“They’re not able to demonstrate that they would be able to support the business.”

It is estimated Hearts are around halfway to raising the money needed to stave off a winding-up order.

But the outlook for Romanov’s Ukio Bankas was not looking good yesterday, after the? Lithuanian company’s shares fell to an eight-year low on the Vilnius stock exchange. The business has now lost a quarter of its value in a month.

Finasta investment bank analyst Tadas Povilauskas said: “If Romanov hasn’t rescued his soccer club and hasn’t increased the share capital of Ukio Bankas as was planned some time ago, it probably means he just can’t find the money.”